THE MODERNITY OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OR WRITING KIERKEGAARD AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME

From his first book forward, Stanley Cavell has responded to modernity's demands upon philosophic writing. He has also turned from time to time to remark on the situation of Christian speech or its theological elaboration, especially when commenting on Kierkegaard. Implicit in both gestures are questions about whether Christian theology has ever become modern in Cavell's sense—has ever responded to modernity as a crisis in its relation to received forms. If writers of Christian theology take nothing else from Cavell, they should at least carry away some sense of the demand that Kierkegaard puts on any theology written after him.     

THE ETHICS OF LAND RESTITUTION

Many indigenous communities were dispossessed of their land during the period of colonial rule. This long process resulted in forced demographic removals and perennial poverty. Nowadays these communities, especially Third World groups, seek redress of this situation through legal processes of land restitution. This process is met by resistance from landowners in these countries, the colonial powers of old, as well as from big corporations that benefited from the dispossession. The investigation undertaken in this article addresses the ethics of land reform from a Christian ethical perspective. The policy of land restitution in South Africa is used as a case study, but the results of this research are also applicable to other parts of the world where land restitution is considered. The article first evaluates the biblical teachings of land and land reform and their implications for modern ethics. In the light of these issues, the article addresses the question of whether land ownership can be considered as a fundamental human right. The article also focuses on the legality of expropriation and dispossession of land for the purposes of restitution. Moreover, guidelines for fair and legal restitution within the context of Christian ethics and legal philosophical principles are proposed.     

THE RETRIEVAL OF DEIFICATION: HOW A ONCE-DESPISED ARCHAISM BECAME AN ECUMENICAL DESIDERATUM

Adolf von Harnack and Karl Barth were equally incensed by the detrimental impact that the notion of deification had had on Christian theology. Lately, however, theosis has been discovered in Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, the Wesleys, and an impressive number of other western authorities. This essay considers this sensational development and finds that (1) there is little agreement on what is constitutive of deification, making the notion an ecumenist's dream and a philosopher's nightmare; and (2) the agreement between the Greek Fathers and Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin on deification amounts to their endorsement of some form of participatory metaphysics. Calling for greater precision, this essay argues that the Greek patristic doctrine of deification includes synergistic anthropology and sacramental realism that are in tension with the Reformation understandings of participation in God.     

RETHINKING THE CHRISTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF REINHOLD NIEBUHR'S CHRISTIAN REALISM

While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between particular political interests and universal moral ideals threatens not only to undermine Niebuhr's efforts to preserve the ethical quality of politics but also his grounds for hope. The source of this problem can be traced to a weakness in the Christological foundations of Niebuhr's Christian realism—specifically to his intentional severing of classical Christology from politics in his appropriation of Augustine's realism. After examining the reasons for this rejection of classical reflections about Jesus, this article explains how the Christology of Niebuhr's favorite early Christian realist, Augustine, makes possible a theological reasoning that expands the social imagination, and promotes a deeply principled and hopeful material transformation, while not forfeiting its critical and explanatory capacity.     

LOVE IN THE "UNIDIVERSE": A SALESIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CHANCE

The notion of the universe evolving through an interplay of law and chance raises numerous theological questions. In particular, scientific evidence of chance confronts images of God and divine action within this emerging worldview. To interpret Christian faith within a scientific world, figures from church tradition are drawn into the conversation, and a particular spirituality is appropriated to highlight the relationship between science and religion. The personal, practical, accessible spirituality of Saint Francis de Sales is retrieved for the discussion. This Christian humanist recognized the love of God as paramount to a human-divine relationship. The themes of divine providence and the will of God illustrate a spirituality of the heart that provides relevant insights into the theological implications of chance. An overview of how the reality of chance has posed numerous questions is considered before drawing on the spirituality of de Sales. Various theological views on chance are presented. As Salesian thought enhances an understanding of divine action in a world of chance, contemporary theologies of chance provide a framework for understanding the teachings of the saint in a new way.     

Freedom is Not Free?: Posthumanist,Ecological Reflections on Christian Freedom and Responsibility

Philosophers aligned with a kind of posthumanism emphasize the modern, modern human's freedom and ethics are founded on a break from all ties to animality and materiality. Highlighting the posthumanist work of Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad, this article aligns key insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work, such as his pervasive concept of “sociality,” with the call for a more ecologically embedded humanity. The resulting reconstruction of Christian freedom is profoundly Christological and sacramental: freedom‐for the other comes in, with, and through—not apart from—both the divine and created other.     

PHILOSOPHICAL-PEDAGOGICAL CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

An analysis of recent publications in the field of school effectiveness studies shows that virtually no contributions have been made in that knowledge domain with respect to the effectiveness of Christian schools. To address this shortcoming—while keeping the undesirability of a package approach to Christian education in mind—a philosophical-pedagogical approach to a more systematic assessment of Christian schools is offered. A number of other considerations regarding the assessment of the effectiveness of Christian schools are left for further discussion and investigation.     

CREATED FOR EVERLASTING LIFE: CAN THEISTIC EVOLUTION PROVIDE AN ADEQUATE CHRISTIAN ACCOUNT OF HUMAN NATURE?

Christians who affirm standard science and the biblical doctrine of creation often endorse theistic evolution as the best approach to human origins. But theistic evolution is ambiguous. Some versions are naturalistic (NTE)—God created humans entirely by evolution—and some are supernaturalistic (STE)—God supernaturally augmented evolution. This article claims that NTE is inadequate as an account of human origins because its theological naturalism and emergent physicalist ontology of the soul or person conflict with the Christian doctrine that God created humans for everlasting life. Both the traditional Christian account of the afterlife and its modern Christian alternatives involve God's supernatural action and a separation (dualism) of person and body at death. STE can combine with several philosophical accounts of the body‐soul relation to provide an adequate Christian account of original human nature.     

CONCEPT ART, CLONES, AND CO-CREATORS: THE THEOLOGY OF MAKING

In this essay the author compares postmodern art and the cloning of mammals and argues that they both rely upon a narrative of human creativity which sets humanity in the place of God as the only source of meaning and truth in the cosmos. The Christian tradition by contrast owns limits to human making—both artistic and scientific—which are provided by the natural order of creation and by the story of humanity as fallen, and then as redeemed by the unique reordering of reality which the original creator God makes possible in Jesus Christ. Human creativity in the Christian perspective is circumscribed by human creatureliness and this implies that Christian communities will subject aesthetic and technological invention to more careful scrutiny than does a science‐informed and industrially sustained liberal social order.     

THE RELIGIOUS PRECONDITIONS FOR THE RACE CONCEPT IN MODERN SCIENCE

The view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict has increasingly lost favor among scholars who have sought more nuanced theoretical frameworks for evaluating the configurations of these two bodies of knowledge in modern life. This article situates, for the first time, the modern study of race into scholarly assessments on the relations between religion and science. I argue that the formation of the race concept in the minds of Western European and American scientists grew out of and remained indebted to Christian intellectual history. Religion was not subtracted from nor stood in conflict with constructions of race developed across the modern life and health sciences.     

Milk for babes: Erasmus and Calvin on the Problem of Christian Eloquence

Abstract

This article examines how Erasmus and Calvin received Paul’s rejection of human eloquence in Christian teaching, and how this rejection forms their understanding of the relationship between language and revelation. It consists of a close reading of Erasmus’s and Calvin’s exegetical works on 1 Corinthians in order, first, to understand their reception of Paul’s negative assessment of human rhetoric, and second, their exhortations to employ a more appropriately Christian rhetoric. It is concluded that W. Bouwsma was correct in suggesting that one ought to imagine Erasmus and Calvin as practitioners of a similar theological methodology, a theologia rhetorica. Charles Trinkhaus first employed this heuristic category to describe certain theological and methodological tendencies among Italian humanist theologians that separates them from their scholastic contemporaries.     

Scripts we live by: on inheriting canonical texts

ABSTRACT

In this article, I theorize the interpretation of harmful canonical texts with special reference to John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. As a result of the actions and rhetoric of some of its North American evangelical readers, the Institutes has come to function as an intellectual foundation for certain expressions of modern homophobia. In conversation with Jacques Derrida on inheritance and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on reparativity, I thus consider how queer evangelicals (especially those who wish to continue identifying themselves as such) ought to engage both Calvin’s text, particularly, as well as, more generally, those other canonical texts that are sources of trauma. In so doing, I proffer a capacious view of interpretation as not only what one says but also how one lives.     

“I will bless those who bless you”: Christian Zionism,Fetishism, and Unleashing the Blessings of God

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.     

BRICOLAGE AND THE PURITY OF TRADITIONS: Engaging the Stoics for Contemporary Christian Ethics

This essay is a response to C. Kavin Rowe's critique of my 2011 argument that certain dimensions of Roman Stoic ethics are at work in Jonathan Edwards's moral thought. Rowe raises questions about the act of selectively retrieving ideas from a philosophical tradition to support constructive work in another tradition. I argue for the importance of acknowledging how Christian thought has been shaped by what Jeffrey Stout describes as moral bricolage, the selective retrieval of ideas from various traditions, and I contend that this bricolage can continue to be a fruitful means through which Christian ethics engages external traditions. Moreover, the importance of Stoicism's retrieval in early modern philosophy makes the work of eighteenth‐century theologians such as Edwards a particularly valuable resource for exploring the plausibility of Christian engagement with the Stoics.     

PAUL RICOEUR AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS: NARRATIVE IDENTITY AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

This article attempts to reconcile the holistically understood and embodied philosophical anthropology indicated by Paul Ricoeur's concept of "narrative identity" with Christian personal eschatology, as realized in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Narrative identity resonates with spiritual autobiography in the Christian tradition—evinced here by a brief comparison with the confessed self of St Augustine of Hippo—and offers to theology a means of explaining identity in a way which: 1) places care for the other firmly within the construction of one's sense of self; 2) accounts for radical change over time and 3) hints at the possibility of the in-breaking of the infinite into the finite. In this article I will contend that narrative identity provides theology with an exemplary means of framing selfhood which is ultimately congruent with the orthodox Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.     

Reformation Humanism: Reading the Classics in the New Theology

Scholarly discussions on what constitutes Christian humanism in the Renaissance and Reformation periods have typically concentrated on its manifestations before 1536, when Erasmus died. In this period, the old arguments for the reading of the Classics once set out by Basil and Augustine still predominated. Calvin’s teaching on the Fall and the noetic effects of sin, however, provided another basis for the incorporation of pagan thought into Christian learning. Christians who followed Calvin benefited from his precise and comprehensive theological position on the place of worldly knowledge in God’s original creation as a means for justifying their study of the Classics.     

TYPES OF PRAYER,HEART RATE VARIABILITY,AND INNATE HEALING

Spiritual practices such as prayer have been shown to improve health and quality of life for those facing chronic or terminal illness. The early Christian healing tradition distinguished between types of prayer and their role in healing, placing great emphasis on the healing power of more integrated relational forms of prayer such as prayers of gratitude and contemplative prayer. Because autonomic tone is impaired in most disease states, autonomic homeostasis may provide insight into the healing effects of prayer. I report on observations in five volunteers engaging in five types of prayer. Using heart rate variability as a measure of autonomic tone and adaptability, I review the potential correlation of type of prayer with autonomic rebalance as measured specifically by psychophysiological coherence ratios. The five types—supplication, devotion, intercession, gratefulness, and contemplative prayer—elicited varying degrees of improvements in heart rate variability and corresponding psychophysiological coherence. These observations suggest a correlation of innate healing to prayer type that is consistent with teachings from the Christian healing tradition and with modern research. Further research is warranted to verify these hypotheses.     

A CHRISTIAN NATURALISM: DEVELOPING THE THINKING OF GORDON KAUFMAN

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory₁ and Jesus trajectory₂. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic‐humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form.